Overview

By partnering with West Nile virus surveillance labs across the country, the WestNile 4K Project is planning to sequence more than 4,000 virus genomes to reconstruct a high definition picture of West Nile virus spread and evolution during the last 20 years in the United States. The data that they generate will be immediately released and, along with other entomological data, will be used to uncover local transmission dynamics. As little progress has been made in effectively controlling West Nile virus outbreaks since its emergence, their goal is to use fine-scale transmission networks revealed through virus genomics to better design targeted control measures

788

Genomes

1

Countries

32

States

42

Institutions

83

Collaborators

Recent Updates

New Hampshire

Collaboration and data sources We received 41 samples of RNA extracted from mosquito pools that tested positive for West Nile virus from Denise Bolton, Abigail Mathewson, Carolyn Fredett, Amy Kutschke and Rebecca Lovell at the New Hampshire Division of Public Health Services, Department of Health and Human Services. The samples were spread across four years: 2 from 2013, 2 from…

California and Washington

Collaboration and data sources The samples from San Diego county were provided by Nikos Garfield and Saran Grewal from the San Diego County Vector Control Program. The samples from all the other counties in California, including Sacramento-Yolo and Kern were provided by Ying Fang and Chris Barker from the Barker Lab, University of California, Davis and Sarah Wheeler from Sacramento-Yolo Mosquito…

Read More

Leadership

Nate Grubaugh

Assistant Professor, Yale School of Public Health

Nathan D. Grubaugh, M.S., Ph.D. is an Assistant Professor at the Yale School of Public Health in the department of Epidemiology of Microbial Diseases. He spent ~7 years working in the biotech sector before earning a M.S. in biotechnology from Johns Hopkins University in 2011 and a Ph.D. in microbiology from Colorado State University in 2016. Nate did his postdoctoral training in pathogen genomics under the guidance of Kristian Andersen at Scripps Research before joining the faculty at Yale in 2018.

Nate is trained as an arbovirologist, and has used his diverse background in private, government, and academic research to develop molecular strategies to detect, track, and understand mosquito-borne virus outbreaks. Having studied the ecology and evolution of West Nile virus during his Ph.D., a primary objective in his lab is to expand this work into using genomic epidemiology to inform targeted control measures.

Nate Grubaugh

Assistant Professor

Yale School of Public Health Department of Epidemiology of Microbial Diseases

Ryan Smith

Assistant Professor, Iowa State University

Ryan C. Smith, Ph.D. is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Entomology at Iowa State University. He earned his degree in molecular biology at the University of California Riverside working on mosquito genetics, then did his post-doctoral training at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health focusing on mosquito host-pathogen interactions. Ryan joined the faculty at Iowa State in 2015 establishing a research program with both lab- and field-based components to better understand mosquito-borne disease transmission.

These experiences have led Ryan to explore how mosquitoes transmit diseases like malaria and Zika virus. Ryan also oversees mosquito and West Nile virus surveillance in the state of Iowa, working closely with local and state public health partners to monitor potential disease outbreaks and to investigate the epidemiological factors that contribute to West Nile virus transmission. Ryan is a member of the Midwest Regional Center for Vector-borne disease, leading efforts to enhance the capacity to anticipate, prevent, and control vector-borne diseases.

Ryan Smith

Assistant Professor

Iowa State University Department of Entomology

Kristian Andersen

Associate Professor, Scripps Research

Kristian Andersen, PhD is an associate professor in the Department of Immunology and Microbiology at Scripps Research, with joint appointments in the Department of Integrative Structural and Computational Biology, and at the Scripps Research Translational Institute. Over the past decade, his research has focused on the complex relationship between host and pathogen. Using a combination of next-generation sequencing, field work, experimentation, and computational biology he has spearheaded large international collaborations investigating the spread and evolution of deadly pathogens, including Zika virus, Ebola virus, West Nile virus, and Lassa virus. His work is highly cross-disciplinary and exceptionally collaborative.

Kristian earned his doctoral degree from the University of Cambridge in immunology and performed postdoctoral work in Pardis Sabeti's group at Harvard University and the Broad Institute. He has received several awards, including the Max Perutz Prize in 2008, a Carlsberg Foundation Fellowship in 2009, and was chosen as a PEW Biomedical Scholar in 2016.